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10 The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, September 22, 2024
Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) holds Simea (voiced by Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda) in“Moana 2,” a much-anticipated sequel to the 2016 film. DISNEY PHOTOS
‘Moana’ sequel swells in size
Story that directors envisioned as series
changes course to big-screen destination
By Jake Coyle
Associated Press
When you look at some
of the numbers, it’s hard to
believe “Moana 2” was ever
going to be anything but a
movie.
When the teaser trailer
for “Moana 2” dropped in
May, it was watched 178
million times in 24 hours.
That’s more than “Inside
Out 2,” more than “Frozen
2,” more than any animated
Disney movie before.
A veritable ocean’s worth
of anticipation is awaiting the sequel to 2016’s
“Moana,” all proof that one
of the more dramatic pivots
in recent Walt Disney
Co. history is paying off,
big time. “Moana 2” was
originally intended to be a
streaming series. Now it’s
steering toward being one
of the fall’s biggest blockbusters.
What can you say except
you’re welcome?
When Bob Iger returned
as chief executive of Disney
in late 2022, one of his top
priorities was shifting away
from putting the studio’s
most prized assets onto
streaming. He wanted to
put the focus back on the
big screen — and all the
ancillary benefits (including merchandizing and
streaming) that come after.
The series that directors David Derrick Jr. and
Jason Hand had worked on
for more than a year would
become “Moana 2.” The
movie, which added Dana
Ledoux Miller as a director and co-writer, was only
announced this year and
now is opening Nov. 27.
“It became all hands
on board,” Derrick says.
“There’s a saying in Samoa:
‘All together or not at all.’”
Derrick and Hand, both
veteran storyboard artists
at Disney, had effectively
done their job too well.
Their work convinced
Disney executives to put
the studio’s full weight
behind a theatrical film,
even though a live-action
“Moana” remained in
development. (That movie,
directed by Thomas Kail, is
set to open in July 2026.)
“We developed the
world, we developed the
over-arching story that
we’re still telling,” Derrick
says. “We would screen it in
our big theater the way we
watch all of us our projects
here. There was a groundswelling, unanimous
concert of everyone saying
this needs to be on the big
screen.”
“It was always going to
be big,” Hand adds. “It just
kept on getting bigger.”
“Moana 2” was at the
nexus of a major shift for
Disney and for Hollywood
in calculating how to weigh
theatrical and streaming. Different studios have
different strategies, and
those are still evolving. But
after rushing to throw as
much content as possible on streaming services,
companies like Disney
began to rethink their
approach.
This year, Disney has
regained its box-office
swagger, led by a pair of
$1 billion films in “Inside
Out 2” and “Deadpool vs.
Wolverine.” “Moana 2”
could make it three. But
however well “Moana 2”
does, it’s not likely to hurt
its appeal once it begins
streaming. The most popular film on Disney+ last
year? “Moana.”
“We always felt that it
deserved to be on the big
Maui, voiced by Dwayne Johnson, center, and Heihei the rooster, voiced by Alan Tudyk, left, and Pua the pig join in on the fun in
“Moana 2.”
screen” Hand says. “It’s the
best way to tell a story.”
But the shift for “Moana
2,” which returns Auli’i
Cravalho as the voice of
Moana and Dwayne Johnson as the voice of Maui,
wasn’t easy. First of all,
that meant living up to the
standard of the first film —
one that Miller, who is of
Samoan heritage, considers groundbreaking for its
Pacific Islander representation.
“I knew as a writer
that movie was going to
change what was possible,”
Miller says. “It was going
to change the way when
I walk into a room I was
going to be able to pitch a
story because people had
a new understanding of
what it meant to be of the
Pacific.”
Miller — who founded
the organization PEAK
(Pasifika Entertainment
Advancement Komiti) as a
way for Pasifika people to
find community in Holly-
wood — is also a writer on
the live-action “Moana.”
“My world has become all
Moana all the time,” she
says, laughing.
Both films, the directors
say, developed alongside
each other, with many
connections and shared
cultural consultants.
Set three years after the
original film, “Moana 2”
finds Moana again forced
to head across the Pacific
on an ocean adventure. But
this time, she’s traveling
with a crew, in a new
canoe, and carrying new
responsibilities. That
includes her younger sister,
Simea (Khaleesi LambertTsuda).
“The way the first film
connected her to her past,
she’s now connecting
everyone to the future,”
Derrick says. “So we added
and created all these new
characters when it was in
series, and we got to know
them in a deep way.”
Hand compares the
series development to a
workshop for the new
characters.
“Yes, it was a massive
undertaking — probably more so than what we
initially imagined,” he says.
“But ultimately we were
telling that same story. A
lot of stuff that went by
the wayside just naturally
helped the story be its
proper fighting weight.”
Now Moana is joined
by a wayfinding crew
that includes the characters Loto (Rose Matafeo),
an engineer; Kele (David
Fane), a grumpy farmer;
and Moni (Hualālai
Chung), a historian and
storyteller.
“What people don’t
realize is that the people
in the Pacific found the
last discoverable land on
Earth,” says Derrick, who
also has ancestral ties to
Samoa.
“They created the largest
cultural ethnosphere in the
world prior to westward
expansion — one third of
the Earth, all through the
art and spirituality and
science of wayfinding. So
for me, it’s very important that each one of these
crew members display that
Indigenous genius that it
took.”
Honoring such things
tends to resonate much
differently in a movie
theater than it does on a
television. The makers of
“Moana 2” are still rushing
to get their film ready for
cinemas, with all the spectacle and music they can fit
into it. But they know their
young Polynesian protagonist will be seen big.
“When I watched the
first film, I was pregnant
with my first child,” Miller
says. “I thought to myself
as I was watching it: The
world will be forever different because of this movie.
My child will never not
know a world where they
are not seen on the biggest
stage.”
